Nicholson was raging- fan chief gives first hand account of Celtic’s reaction to David Munro
Joe O’Rourke has claimed that Michael Nicholson was raging with the performance of David Munro at Saturday’s match between Celtic and Ross County.
There appeared to be a number of quirks and inconsistencies in the performance of the match referee with most attention falling on the 50th minute decision to award a penalty against Matt O’Riley.
That was the fourth penalty awarded against Celtic in their last five matches with mystery surrounding the decision to disallow a ‘goal’ from Jota during the 2-1 victory at Motherwell.
VAR has come in for some criticism but most of the anger is now on the match referee and VAR officials and their interpretation of the Laws of the game, especially handball.
Should the Celtic board publicly call for a full explanation on VAR to date?
No, we have to trust that teething troubles will be resolved
Yes, with VAR comes accountability and transparency
In his weekly opinion piece on the Message Board of the Celtic Supporters Association, O’Rourke explains:
There were a couple of really blatant errors, the penalty awarded against Matt Riley was comical, but not funny to the Celtic Support. He let the County keeper place the ball down, then pick it up again when Kyogo went into challenge for it. He also denied us what looked like a decent penalty shout for a two handed shove in the back on Tony Ralston.
It just seemed as if every tackle made by a Celtic Player was a foul. The foul statistic’s in the game are astonishing, I don’t remember the great Barcelona team with Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta getting loads of fouls against them, but then again they never had Scottish officials in Spain.
I spoke to Michael Nicholson after the match, and I can assure you he was raging just as much as I was. I’m certainly not buying this teething problems guff either, as Big Ange said, if it’s not ready, then don’t roll it out, if they had waited until this break, they could have had an extra four weeks to practice, because as we all know, there is absolutely “No Chance” of any of those Clowns going to the Word Cup.
Eight days earlier Nicholson used the ‘teething problems’ card at the Celtic AGM to explain the spate of decisions going against Ange Postecoglou’s side.
The Daily Express reported:
The first step with that was pushing for VAR – which worked out well! The second stage was to raise our concerns about VAR with the SFA. In relation to the specific incident (at Hearts) we did ask questions about how the rules had been applied.
I think it is inevitable that with the early stages of VAR there are going to be some teething issues. But you can rest assured that we do continue to press that issue with the SFA and the SPFL. There is a working group that the SPFL have brought together of all the clubs.
There has been no comment from Celtic to the SFA statement last Friday explaining the decision making process that disallowed Jota’s goal at Motherwell.